Brian Rudman: More cash sought to go out with bang

COMMENT

Talk about a work in progress. A week into the Auckland Festival and director Simon Prast is still planning the grand finale. His dream is to end the proceedings with a big pyrotechnic bang, but he's a bit short of cash.

About $40,000 short, in fact, which he needs by next Monday to place an order in time for an October 4 display. So if you're a closet incendiarist with a hankering to sponsor or co-sponsor this event, I'm certain Mr Prast would let you light the touch paper. Ring him quick on 309 0162. Offer ends Monday.

Having got over the shock of this inaugural festival actually managing to achieve lift-off, it's been great to see Auckland's fickle audiences joining in. The 10 performances of the Auckland Theatre Company's premiere season of Albert Wendt's play The Songmaker's Chair were a sell-out, as is German songstress Ute Lemper's show tomorrow night.

Local songwriter/singer Don McGlashan packed the St James for his concert last Saturday.

As is the way with festivals, not everything has been so popular. On opening night last Saturday, while crowds packed Britomart Place for the free delights of Sticky, a smaller group of novelty-seekers filed into the Town Hall for Twin Peaks, a sort of love-in joining rival orchestras the Auckland Philharmonia and New Zealand Symphony.

It turned out to be proof that size isn't everything. Conductor James Judd was like Jonah Lomu playing with the controls of his new in-car boom box. By concert's end, my eardrums were pleading for a little quiet.

However, the disappointing turnout was no doubt more to do with high ticket prices than fear of the noise. At $69 for the cheapest seats, this was way above the $18 or so an Auckland Philharmonia subscriber needs to pay for equivalent seats. A salutary lesson there for the planners.

With this festival not so much planned as thrown together in extremis, the popularity or otherwise of events is going to be a good guide for those designing AKO5 and beyond. One obvious strength has been the contribution of Pacific Island and Asian Aucklanders.

Albert Wendt's play about a Samoan family who arrived here the 1950s sold out, despite mixed reviews.

Then there was the mesmeric Samoan theatre group, Mau, with a performance based on ancient Japanese Noh theatre. On opening night, it was disappointingly overwhelmed by Maori welcomes and farewells, which lasted longer than the actual show. This rather distracted from the show we'd come to see. The encouraging thing was that both shows - and many others as well - emerged out of the new face of Auckland. And with them came new audiences, young and old, who hopefully will continue to be new consumers in Auckland theatreland.

Performances by Korean zither player Byung-ki Hwang and the Taipei Ballet have similarly drawn members of Auckland's Korean community into the festival. Such linkages can only help the dream of developing this festival into a Pacific Rim event.

As a dedicated Wellington festival-goer from way back, one thing missing from AK03, apart of course from the sheer bulk of events that the older festival now offers, is the all-encompassing presence that the Wellington show envelops the city with.

I complained to Simon Prast about the lack, for example, of something as simple as street banners. He says there are some. If so, I've missed them. The fact is, if you walk down Queen St at lunchtime this week it would be easy not to know the festival is on.

That's not a criticism of Mr Prast, who as last minute "receiver" of the event has done wonders just keeping it alive. But in February 2005, the date for the next festival, a priority will have to be to turn Auckland into the home of AK05 in the way that in past years we were the home of the America's Cup.

For Mr Prast, the closing of Queen St between Wellesley St and the Town Hall during the weekends of the festival and the erection of sound stages has been a great success. He was street dancing last weekend, he says, and has the bad back to prove it. He was "very disappointed" they came down after the weekend and is hoping the street closures can be extended next time round.

Blocking Queen St for the duration might be pushing it, but there are surely enough squares and open spaces to keep the show going during the day, particularly as AK05 is programmed for the sultry days of late summer.

But now it's into the second and last week, with things such as Vagabond Tales, an almost new New Zealand opera by Michael Williams, and David McPhail playing Muldoon.

And if you missed Ute Lemper, there's always our very own Jennifer Ward-Lealand being Marlene Dietrich in the Civic Winter Garden.

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

Auckland Festival website